You're a funny guy New Brisavoine (and by funny I mean just as obnoxious a booster as the old Brisavoine).

You also should know that there are precious little examples in the history of the world where the "most probable" demographic predicion actually came true.

Or did I miss something and does Brazil have 200 million?

And are you trying to put one past us with your "300,000 a year" or do you really not understand? A couple of years of high immigration will totally change the demographic situation in Germany so there doesn't have to be 41 continous years of such numbers. Perhaps you don't understand the complexities of demographics?

Anyway, Germany's economical and topographical position dictates that it is highly likely that at one point the current (minor) shrinkage will reverse (most likely because of more immigration and a lower death rate).
Maybe you should look up France's demographic predictions after WW1 and see how much of that came true...

__________________For some the coast signifies the end of their country and for some it signifies the beginning of the world...

Right, so someone who isn't a yes-man and is even impudent enough to detail the reasons why he disagrees with you is "obnoxious". Nice conception of debate!

Quote:

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Maybe you should look up France's demographic predictions after WW1 and see how much of that came true...

It was followed by two exceptional events: the deadliest world war ever and a big baby boom. History never repeats itself. At least let's hope you're not wishing for a Third World War to prove the population projections of the French and German statistical offices wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Anyway, Germany's economical and topographical position dictates that it is highly likely that at one point the current (minor) shrinkage will reverse (most likely because of more immigration and a lower death rate).

Oh, so if Germany's position "dictates", then I guess there's no point in discussing things.

Anyway, end of discussion with you as far as I'm concerned. Your position here seems more like a belief than an opinion based on facts, and there's no arguing with believers. Either you believe or you don't.

President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled his long-awaited rescue plan for the French motor industry. In exchange for some €6bn ($7.8bn) of loans, Peugeot-Citroen and Renault have promised not to cut jobs or shut down factories in France.

The Paris government is determined to keep industry alive in France – especially the car industry which is one of the country’s largest direct and indirect employers and one of its biggest exporters.

Yet the unspoken truth of the French economy is that it is in fact becoming increasingly service-led. And it is likely to become even more so as the French population continues to grow above the European average. There has been a mini baby boom under way for some time in France, and the economists of Société Générale believe that this could well be the country’s secret weapon to cope with the current crisis. While the rest of Europe worries about consumer spending, SocGen has found that families with children spent an average 35 per cent more last year than childless couples or single people.

Moreover, 69 per cent of families have two cars per household against just 35 per cent for the rest of the population on average. Families also spend 35-40 per cent more on leisure and 55 per cent more on transport. But perhaps the most important advantage is the fact that France has a significantly higher population of young people than old, offering some comfort as the post-war 65-year-old generation of former baby boomers move into retirement on state-funded pensions.

France has other buffers against the crisis – not least the fact that household debt remains low and household savings are still high. At the same time, the high number of public sector workers and the country’s social safety net is helping to cushion the impact of the global slowdown. Cynically too, the country’s failure to create a strong export-led industry like Germany means that it will not feel as much of the pain as its big capital goods exporting neighbour on the other side of the Rhine.

The government is nonetheless worried, and measures such as Monday’s car package show the extent to which Paris feels the need to take vigorous short-term action. But the government should perhaps be thinking a little more long-term.

For if France now has a booming fertility rate – 834,000 babies were born last year – that is keeping the overall population stable while its European neighbours are all showing declines, it is precisely because previous governments set the framework in place to encourage women to have babies.

Highly attractive tax breaks for families with three children or more, together with readily accessible child care from the earliest age are largely behind the mini-baby boom. The policy in part was developed to defend and promulgate French language and culture against the creeping dominance of English.

But it was also designed to bolster the workforce by allowing mothers to continue working, making up for the post-war deficit of working males. It is quite understandable that President Sarkozy is concentrating on fighting the uncertainties caused by the crisis with short-term fixes. Yet his real test will be to match his predecessors with long-term initiatives that will provide the work for all these baby boom babies when they come of age in a decade or more.

That implies, among other things, allowing car manufacturers and other industries to restructure and modernise to ensure that in the long-term they will be still around and flourishing to employ this new generation.

Usually the birth rate goes down for a few years, as couples delay the births of children. So I would expect the birth rate to go down a bit in France and in the other Western countries in the next few years.

Out of sheer curiosity, what is the demographic evoulution of Metropolitan France? I know the UK has seen a large rise in African/Middle Eastern/Eastern European populations. Are these higher brith rates for all ethno groups in France?

Even if you don't have offical graphs, I'd like to know one's layman position...

Out of sheer curiosity, what is the demographic evoulution of Metropolitan France? I know the UK has seen a large rise in African/Middle Eastern/Eastern European populations. Are these higher brith rates for all ethno groups in France?

Even if you don't have offical graphs, I'd like to know one's layman position...

I already talked about that in post #7 in this thread. The fertility rate of immigrant women in France is higher than the fertility rate of French-born women, but overall it raises the fertility rate of France by only 0.1. The fertility rate of French-born women is about the same as the fertility rate of non-Hispanic White women in the US.

Anyway I was refering to the infamously WRONG prediction by the UN years earlier that Brazil would have 200 million in 1995 (or something, I don't remember exactely). As it turns out they were off by about 45 million...

Just like it will turn out thet Brisavoine's "prediction" will be way off...

__________________For some the coast signifies the end of their country and for some it signifies the beginning of the world...

It's not "true" or "untrue", it's a projection, a guess, an estimate, neither fact or fiction. We will have to see.

It's anything but a guess. It's a calculation by these statistical offices based on the shape of the age pyramid and the population momentum. Population is like a big steam ship, it can change course, but only very slowly, due to its inherent momentum and the shape of its age pyramid. That's why it is possible to make projections over a few decades (which would be totally impossible with, say, the economy, which can change course radically over just a few years). The only variable that can swing a lot is immigration, but they have made different projections based on different net migration assumption, and like I've already said, it would take a very high sustained net migration in Germany, and a very low net migration in France to have Germany with a larger population than France in 2050. Not totally impossible, but not very realistic (why would France and Germany, with no border between them, and coupled economies, have such strikingly diverging migration patterns over 41 years?).

truth. I checked Wikipedia before checking IBGE. In fact, the english Wikipedia page is the one which says 196 million. (it seems thats the CIA World Factbook statistics)

Quote:

Anyway I was refering to the infamously WRONG prediction by the UN years earlier that Brazil would have 200 million in 1995 (or something, I don't remember exactely). As it turns out they were off by about 45 million...

Just like it will turn out thet Brisavoine's "prediction" will be way off...

oh yeah, those predictions were very wrong. The growth rate of the brazilian population has been steadily declining. Which obviously, also brings lots of problems for the social welfare services, specially in a developing country.

It's not "true" or "untrue", it's a projection, a guess, an estimate, neither fact or fiction. We will have to see.

But I agree with Shiro projections over ten years are totally inaccurate: it's just for 'experience' I say that. In the past thousands (yep, thousands) projections looking 20/30/40 years forward were wrong. Just take a look to '60s, '70s and '80s projection on 2000 and you hardly can find something which forecasted quite correctly the current world

Anyway, in particular about Germany: In '90s Germany growth was high, due to immigration; now it is low
Then in few years Germany trend changed dramatically: then making projections as Germany growth will be always that high or that low doesn't make much sense to me.
As we saw conditions can change in few years. And in 50 years they can chenge again and again

Let see Italy for istance. Its birth rate is very low since many years (just now it started to rise a while)
During last '80s and '90s population stop at 56 mio and start decreasing: projections (projections of less than 10 years ago in any cases) told us in 2030 or so Italy population would reach 45 mio or so; and projections for 2k in early '90s was 55/54 mio
Then... in 2008 Italy hit 60 mio

The low birt rate is a tragedy for Germany, but we Germans don't have to worry about dying out. We have just outsourced our parts that are performing an population explosion to north America. Look at the german speaking Hutterites and Amish, they have fertility rates of about 8 children per woman and are doubling every 20 years. That leads to a birth rate of 4%. There are 300,000 o them, that makes 12,000 births per year. Thats 2% of the births in Germany.

You also have to look where the high birth rates in France are. The departement with the highest fertility rate in metropolitan France is Seine-Saint-Denis, the departement with one of the highest migrant share in France (fertility in 2005: 2.4). Remember the car burnings in 2005? That's the departement where it started.

Out of sheer curiosity, what is the demographic evoulution of Metropolitan France? I know the UK has seen a large rise in African/Middle Eastern/Eastern European populations. Are these higher brith rates for all ethno groups in France?

Even if you don't have offical graphs, I'd like to know one's layman position...

Seine-Saint-Denis is a departement with the highest migrant share in France and has also the highest fertility rate.

Seine-Saint-Denis is a departement with the highest migrant share in France and has also the highest fertility rate.

Wrong. The department with the highest fertility rate is Mayenne, in western France, a department with very few immigrants. In general the highest fertility rates in France are found in northwestern France, where there are fewer immigrants than in the rest of France.

If you want to participate in this thread, at least try to check your facts and don't post wrong information.

Wrong. The department with the highest fertility rate is Mayenne, in western France, a department with very few immigrants. In general the highest fertility rates in France are found in northwestern France, where there are fewer immigrants than in the rest of France.

If you want to participate in this thread, at least try to check your facts and don't post wrong information.